briefing paper 'women in the informal economy in pakistan...

BRIEFING PAPERWomen in the Informal Economy in Pakistan

Chalking out Ways to Bridge the Disconnect betweenthe Feminist Movement, the Workers’ Organizations

and Political Parties

BRIEFING PAPER

Written by Dr. Aliya Hashmi Khan

Infographics bySadaf Khan

Urdu translation byMuhammad Shozab Askari

Imprint©2017 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Pakistan Office1st Floor, 66-W, Junaid Plaza, Jinnah Avenue, Blue Area, P.O Box 1289, Islamabad, Pakistan Responsible:Rolf Paasch | Resident DirectorSidra Saeed | Programme Officer

Phone: +92 51 2803391-4 | Fax: +92 51 2803395Website: http://www.fes-pakistan.orgFacebook: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Pakistan Twitter @FES_PAK

Commercial use of all media published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) is not permitted without the written consent of the FES.

About the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) is the oldest political foundation in Germany. The foundation is named after Friedrich Ebert, the first democratically elected president of Germany.

The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung established its Pakistan Representative Office in 1990. FES focuses on enhancing dialogue for mutual understanding and peaceful development in its international work. Social justice in politics, the economy and in the society is one of our leading principles worldwide. In Pakistan, FES has been carrying out various activities to strengthen the democratic culture through deliberative processes and informed public discourse; promoting and advocating social justice as an integral part of economic development through economic reforms and effective labour governance & enhancing regional cooperation for peace and development in recent years.

The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES).

ISBN: 978-969-9675-09-6

i

List of Abbreviations:

FES Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

NWG National Working Group

HBWWs Home Based Women Workers

ICLS International Conference of Labour Statisticians

ILO International Labour Organization

UN United Nations

GDP Gross Domestic Product

HBWs Home Based Workers

EOBI Employees Old-Age Benefits Institution

ESSI Employees Social Security Institution

ITUC International Trade Union Confederation

NGOs Non-Government Organization

WIEGO Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing

SEWA Self-Employed Women's Association

HNSA Home-Net South Asia

ii

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) is the oldest political foundation in Germany. It is named after Friedrich Ebert, the first democratically elected president of Germany. Through its vast international network and offices in more than 100 countries, FES promotes democratic political culture, socially inclusive economic development as well as peace and stability. FES regards gender equality as an integral part of social justice, democracy, peace and international solidarity. Throughout all fields of our work we make sure that gender equality is a central criterion for the way we address the respective topic.

In many Asian countries, the feminist movements are having their roots in other rights-based movements. Hence, feminist narratives tend to be integrated with other social justice issues; which is definitely the strength of the movements. On the other hand, privileging a rights-based approach has sometimes resulted in fragmentation and a lack of political dimensions, neglecting political and economic empowerment and ignoring existing power structures. Ironically, the main stumbling blocks to strengthening the feminist movement often come from within, namely its lack of inclusiveness and unity. In addition to this, there has been only limited interaction between the feminist movements and other social movements, scholars who are not explicitly feminists, the private sector and policymakers. This results in feminist claims of being perceived as isolated and marginalized.

The roots in the social justice movement can be used to build bridges and forge new alliances between feminists and other actors to create a broad base for gender equality in society. Moreover, FES sees its role in providing a platform for coalitions between feminists, progressive thinkers and opinion leaders, civil society actors, social movements, trade unions, academics, representatives of the private sector, and policymakers.

Against this background, followed by extensive consultations with relevant experts, FES Pakistan office has assisted in the establishment of a National Working Group (NWG) on Political Feminism. This group is composed of feminist academicians, economists, political activists and civil society representatives who try to revitalize feminist struggles by incorporating a critique of neoliberalism. This paper is the outcome of discussions of NWG during its first three meetings where members agreed to focus on the rights of female workers in Pakistan’s informal economy with the aim of re-politicizing feminism in the perspective of a political economy framework.

We are thankful to all the *members of the National Working Group who helped in analyzing the situation of Home Based Women Workers (HBWWs) in Pakistan coming up with a number of recommendations. We are also thankful to Dr. Aliya Hashmi Khan for putting her tireless efforts for authoring this paper keeping in view the discussions from

Foreword

iii

Rolf PaaschResident Director,FES Pakistan

November 2017

Sidra SaeedProgramme Officer,

FES Pakistan

*Members of the National Working Group on Political Feminism:Ali Imran, Dr. Aliya H Khan, Dr. Ayesha Anees Malik, Dr. Riffat Haque, Farhat Parveen, Fatima Atif, Khurshid Bano, Mumtaz Mughal, Nasreen Azhar, Nazish Brohi, Dr. Saba Gul Khattak, Sadaf Khan, Salma Jabeen, Samar Zaffer, Sana Ejaz, Sehar Gul

the meetings and Sadaf Khan for developing the infographics. We hope that this paper can be of help for decision makers, civil society and policy groups to understand the feminist’s concerns.

1

“Women in the Informal Economy in Pakistan- Chalking out Ways to Bridge the Disconnect

between the Feminist Movement, the Workers’ Organizations and Political Parties”

he guidelines of the 17th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) state that “employees are considered to have informal

jobs if their employment relationship is, in law or in practice, not subject to national labour legislation, income taxation, social protection or entitlement to certain employment benefits (advance notice of dismissal, severance pay, paid annual or sick leave, etc.) for reasons such as: the jobs or the employees are not declared to the relevant authorities; the jobs are casual or of a limited duration (e.g. through on-call arrangements); the hours of work or wages are below a specified threshold (e.g. below that qualifying for social security contributions); the workers are employed by unincorporated enterprises or by persons in households; the employee’s place of work is outside the premises of the employer’s enterprise (e.g. outworkers without an employment contract); or regulations are not applied, not enforced or not complied with for any reason”. This includes the increasing number of workers in involuntary part-time, contract and subcontract work without effective protection by labour laws and social security, as a result of growing labour market flexibility.

According to the latest available labour force statistics in the Pakistan Labour Force Survey (2014-15), out of the total employed women in the non-agriculture sector, 74% are working in the informal sector and only 26% are working in the formal sector. Within the informal sector, the majority of the females work in the Manufacturing sector (64%) and the Community, Social and Personal Services sector (28%) which includes Education and Health. In the context of distribution by Major Occupational Groups, the majority of female informal economy workers belong to the occupational group of Craft and Related Trades Workers (61%) and Elementary Occupations (16.5%). In terms of distribution by Employment Status, the majority of female informal economy workers are Own Account Workers (42%) and Employees (41%) which includes the sub-categories of Regular paid employees with fixed wage, Casual paid employees, Paid workers by piece rate or work performed and Paid non-family apprentices.

3



Informal wage employment comprises employees hired without social protection contributions by formal or informal enterprises or as paid domestic workers by households. Certain types of wage work are more likely than others to be informal. These include:

• employees of informal enterprises

• casual or day labourers

• temporary or part-time workers

• paid domestic workers

• contract workers

• unregistered or undeclared workers

• industrial outworkers (also called homeworkers or home-based workers)

The informal estimates indicate that there are 20 million home-based workers in the country of which 12 million are women. There are no laws for home-based workers in Pakistan and the country has also not ratified the ILO Convention C177: The Home Work Convention, 1996. The Pakistan Labour Force Survey analysis however indicates that there are 4.8 million home-based workers in the country (working at "their own dwelling” and “family or friend’s dwelling”). A UN Women Report 2016 indicates that home-based workers contributed almost Rs. 400 billion through their wages to the economy, 65% by women. This amount is nearly equal to 3.8% of the total GDP in 2013-14.



Keeping in view that the provinces of Sindh and Punjab have drafted provincial policies for Home-Based Workers which are yet to reach the phase of implementation, it is proposed that the NWG may consider focusing on the category of female HBWs as a representative category of female informal economy workers to take forward the project on “Political Feminism in Pakistan and Women in Political Economy: What is the Role of Feminists?” in the context of minimum wages and freedom of association for HBWs, a statistically significant category of the female informal economy workers of Pakistan.

Both the provincial policies state that their goal is to recognize that HBWs are a special category of workers and affirm

that the provincial governments shall take appropriate legislative and administrative steps to accord equality of legal status to HBWs in relation to other wage earners. In both HBW policy documents, the HBW is defined as a person:

who works within the home boundaries, or in any other premises of his/her choice, but excluding the premises of the employer’s or contractor’s workplace;

who works at home for remuneration or monetary returns; and

who does piece-rate or contract work, which results in a product or services as specified by the employer/contractor.



6

In terms of rights and entitlements of HBWs, it is stated in both provincial policies that the provincial governments will take the following requisite legislative and administrative actions to assure provision of core labour standards to HBWs:

Registration of HBWs with Provincial Labour Departments

Determination of Minimum Wage Rates for different categories of HBWs. Provision of legal remedy for non-payment of minimum wages to HBWs

Terms and conditions of work or employment of HBWs to be clearly expressed and documented by the employer/ contractor

Non-discrimination and equality of treatment in terms of the principle of equal wage for equal value of work for HBWs

Access to health care, social protection and old age benefits for HBWs through registration of HBWs with Provincial Employees Social Security Institutions (Punjab ESSI and Sindh ESSI) and Employees Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI)

Safe and healthy working conditions ensuring Occupational Health and Safety for HBWs by the employer/ contractor

Right to organize and collective bargaining

With the growing informalization of work, traditional forms of trade union

organization are proving inadequate, leading to a growing representational gap. However, it is observed that there is a growing interest in organizing informal workers in this age of neoliberal globalization and new forms of collective solidarity are emerging to bring workers together to promote their rights and interests. There is now country specific evidence to show that increasing numbers of national and international union organizations like the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Global Union Federations are showing an increased interest in organizing informal workers and supporting informal workers’ organizations of various origins. Some of these organizations have been created by informal workers themselves, and others by unions traditionally organizing in the formal economy but now reaching out to organize informal workers; still others have been conceived and sponsored by external actors such as women’s organizations, migrant workers’ organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

(Bonner and Spooner 2011).

The Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) is one of the best known of such initiatives. WIEGO was started in 1997 by a group of academics, researchers and activists. The organization was set up because of the need to link academics and researchers in labour studies with grassroots activists and trade union organizations, largely in response to the statistical invisibility of informal workers, especially women. WIEGO works with organizations of street



7

vendors, home-based workers, waste recyclers and domestic workers. It is closely associated with ITUC and its affiliated unions, including SEWA. WIEGO’s uniqueness lies in its having created a single space in which a diverse range of actors with different capacities and interests – statisticians, economists, activists and organizers, policy analysts and academics from different disciplines – can work together to improve the situation of informal workers (Batliwala 2004).

Thus, empirical evidence from various country case studies highlights that movements of workers are more sustainable if they get support from civil society organizations and/or from the international labour movement.

As documented in the ILO Policy Brief (2016) on “Organizing Workers in the Informal Economy”, the trade union movement has made significant efforts to organize informal economy workers into both new and existing unions, around the world. It has often had to devise innovative strategies for doing so, given a multiplicity of political and practical challenges. These include:

The difficulty of engaging in traditional social dialogue and collective bargaining where employment relationships are unclear and where there is no identifiable employer, as in cases where workers are hired by employment agencies or subcontracted. Often the same workers will perform work under different employment relationships,

at times working for what might be considered an employer and at other times performing work on an own-account basis.

The fact that labour laws in many countries do not cover informal economy workers and sometimes exclude entire sectors, such as domestic and agricultural work.

The cost and difficulty of organizing workers who are scattered and hard to locate. Many informal economy workers perform work on an own-account basis, producing goods and services in their own homes, selling or collecting recyclable waste on the streets, or working as domestic workers in other people’s homes.

Limited administrative and/or financial capacity.

The diverse nature of the informal economy, which can make it difficult to devise comprehensive and coherent organizing strategies.

The ILO Policy Brief (2016) also remarks that unions are not the only kind of organization through which informal economy workers have organized. In India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is both a registered national trade union and a grassroots organization that works to provide employment through the creation of cooperatives owned and run by its two million women members. SEWA has helped establish health care, home care, midwifery and child care cooperatives, among other facilities. Through these



8

cooperatives, according to SEWA, “workers obtain continuous work and income in a non-exploitative manner with better bargaining position, and are transformed into worker-owners”

In the context of minimum wages, the ILO Minimum Wage Policy Guide (2016) states that a high incidence of informality is a major challenge for the rights of workers and has a negative impact on the development of sustainable enterprises. It also poses a major challenge for the enforcement of minimum wages. A new ILO Recommendation 204 concerning the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy has been adopted in 2015, and provides guidance to facilitate the transition of workers and economic units to the formal economy, while ensuring the preservation and improvement of existing livelihoods during the transition.

Article 18 of the ILO Recommendation considers that:

“Through the transition to the formal economy, Members should progressively extend, in law and practice, to all workers in the informal economy, social security, maternity protection, decent working conditions and a minimum wage”

Piece rates are frequently used in certain industries or occupations where the work is repetitive in nature, and where employ-ees have a high level of control over the results. Home based workers and other out-workers (who work in premises other than that of the employer) are also frequently paid piece rates.

In developing countries, workers relying on piece rate wages often constitute a vulnerable section of workers, with many working in the informal economy. Large numbers are women. Piece rate wage is also frequent in the textile, garment, foot-wear and leather industries, and in global supply chains.



10

Many countries regulate piece rates and piece rate work. In various countries, the legislation stipulates that piece workers’ wages may not be lower than the applica-ble minimum wage. In these countries, at the very minimum, workers under a piece rate system should earn the minimum wage. When they do not, the difference between what they have earned and the minimum wage needs to be paid by the employer. In other countries, the legisla-tion provides for the possibility of fixing specific minimum wage rates for piece workers based on a “standard output”. In the State of Madhya Pradesh in India, for example, the minimum wage notification for piece rate beedi rollers (hand rolled cigarettes) indicates a guaranteed mini-mum wage per week provided they roll 5600 beedis per week. Workers are enti-tled to this if the raw materials supplied are inadequate to roll this number. How-ever, the guaranteed minimum wage will not be payable where the failure to roll 5600 beedis is attributable to the worker.

HomeNet Pakistan is a network of organi-zations formed to raise awareness about the working conditions of home-based

women workers who comprise 70% of the informal workforce behind the coun-try`s economic activities. It is working for the recognition and support of home based workers since 2005. Established under the Societies Registration Act and is a member of HomeNet South Asia (HNSA). The other members of HNSA are the HomeNets of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

According to HomeNet, home-based women workers should be recognized as labourers instead of considering them poor, deserving charity and some welfare schemes. They must be seen as producers and productivity of their commodities has to be increased with skill development training, improved technologies, direct access to credit schemes and the market. They also need to be adequately reflected in national statistics and recognized as workers in the labour laws of the country, thus making them eligible for social, eco-nomic and legislative protection. (https://homenetpakistan.org/index-.php/what-is-homenet/)



Even though civil society organizations like HomeNet Pakistan have been consis-tently working for the rights of home-based women workers in Pakistan for over a decade and have been actively involved in the formulation of the two provincial policies for HBWs, it is evident from the empirical evidence and analysis presented in this paper that without a more dynamic and robust linkage and solidarity with the labour movement and the feminist movement in Pakistan, it would be an extremely difficult task to move towards achieving freedom of asso-ciation and minimum wages for home-based women workers.

The literature cited and referenced in this paper also highlights the importance of recognizing that the issues of gaining freedom of association and minimum wages for home-based workers, specifi-cally female HBWs should be addressed in the context of the vast knowledge base that exists and must be tapped to under-stand how struggles for freedom of asso-ciation and minimum wages have been shaped across different country settings and what institutional and legislative reforms have emerged to facilitate the achievement of worker rights for female home-based workers.

Based on the above discussion, the strug-gle for achieving worker rights of free-dom of association and minimum wages for female home-based workers in Paki-stan needs to be viewed as being embed-ded in the overall struggle for worker rights by the labour movement and femi-nist movement in Pakistan. The NWG may debate on how to strategize its future work in bringing the labour movement

and feminist movement closer while also connecting with political party members through provincial level dialogues on this important issue of female informal econ-omy workers, of which female home-based workers constitute a large and vulnerable fraction of the female labour force in Pakistan.

In the context of bridging the disconnect between the feminist movement, the workers’ organizations and political parties, on issues of labour rights, the members of the National Working Group (NWG), after detailed deliberations in the 3rd NWG Meeting on 12th September 2017, agreed to focus on the Home-Based Women Workers (HBWWs) as a significantly representative group of women workers working in large num-bers in various sectors of the informal economy of Pakistan. To promote con-sciousness and solidarity among the femi-nist movement, the workers’ organiza-tions and political parties regarding the grant of worker rights to HBWWs, the NWG concurred to hold provincial level dialogues with all stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of labour Policy & labour Law Reform mea-sures linked with worker rights, work arrangements and working conditions of HBWWs.

The NWG members also developed con-sensus on using the briefing paper as a basic document for keeping the consulta-tions focused on labour issues impacting the lives of HBWWs and further recom-mended that the consultations should specifically reflect upon the following key areas:

12



a- Exploring pathways to address the disconnect between the feminist move-ment and workers’ organizations on issues of worker rights.

b- Modalities of engagement of the feminist movement and workers’ organi-zations with political parties to push forward labour issues through policy and legislative channels with the aim of re-po-liticizing feminism.

c- Struggle for the Right to Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining in the context of HBWWs.

d- Institutional arrangements and legislative reform for HBWWs to receive minimum wages (piece-rated) linked to the provincial minimum wage.

e- Formation of Co-operatives of HBWWs (on the lines of SEWA, India) as a successful paradigm for attaining decent work outcomes and improvement in the quality of lives of HBWWs and their fami-lies with an emphasis on the life-cycle approach.

14

briefing paper 'women in the informal economy in pakistan...

Documents